


Carpe Noctem

by Grammarwoman



Category: Eureka
Genre: Masturbation, Other, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-30
Updated: 2010-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:30:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grammarwoman/pseuds/Grammarwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's house powers down; things heat up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carpe Noctem

**Author's Note:**

> My next entry for this year's [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kink_bingo**](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) for the sensory deprivation square. I bow to [](http://kate.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://kate.dreamwidth.org/)**kate** the Wonderful Beta once again for her services.

When Jack Carter woke up, it was not at all obvious that he wasn't still asleep. The room was beyond the pitch black of a house with all the lights off. It was more like a deep cave, or a windowless, completely sealed fallout shelter – in other words, his home, only more so. He blinked several times, but the view didn't change at all. The darkness felt like a heavy weight pressing down hard on his eyeballs. He took a couple of deep breaths, trying not to panic.

"SARAH?" he called. His house didn't answer, and his voice barely carried in the still air. He flailed around for his phone and found it on his bedside table; at least that meant he was probably still in his own room. He wouldn't have put it past Eureka's usual outbreaks of weirdness to have beamed him somewhere in town, or for Henry's work on the bridge device to have changed the timeline again, dumping him in someone else's bedroom. On the plus side, he could have woken up with Allison. On the other hand, he could have wound up with Jo. Or a resurrected Stark.

He shuddered and flicked open his phone. He was reassured to see it light up: score one for the not-blind guy. Unfortunately, the large font on the screen read "NO SIGNAL". Great – no help from the outside world.

He stared into the nothingness and tried to figure out what was going on. There was something teasing at the edge of his brain, but he couldn’t shake the fuzziness of another late night coming after a long day of craziness. Then it hit him - Fargo had caught up with him the previous morning to let him know about some vital update he had scheduled for SARAH that required him to power down the house and reboot. Then every single pet in Eureka had started howling or whining or meowing at the top of their lungs; the horrible noise was still ringing in Jack’s ears. It had taken almost the whole day to figure out that a frequency modulator gun had gone off in the weapons research department, emitting a noise at such a high level that none of the human population in town could hear it. At the time, he had made a quick mental note to bunk elsewhere but had completely forgotten when he’d finally come home to crash.

So there he was in the dark, with no power, no phone, and no way to get out of his hopefully temporarily offline house - at least, Fargo had said the upgrade wouldn’t take long. There wasn’t yet an urgent need to go stumbling for the escape hatch. No one could fault him for rolling over and going back to sleep.

The problem was, without the rumbling of SARAH’s generators, the buzz of her displays, and her general background noise, he couldn’t settle back down. After the fourth or fifth shifting to get comfortable, it occurred to him that he was wasting a golden opportunity to spend some quality time with himself. The first morning after moving into SARAH, he’d been lazily palming himself in the shower when the house started quizzing him about his porn preferences, flashing various options on the walls of the shower stall. He did not need to know that much about what got Fargo off. When he had recovered from that awkward experience, he’d worked out a careful truce with SARAH about turning off her eyes and ears in his room for privacy. Even then, he still suspected that she peeked in on him and saved the incriminating results off somewhere for her creator’s enjoyment.

"SARAH?" he called out again. His room stayed dark and quiet. The weight of the blanket on top of him was the only thing keeping him from feeling like he was floating away into some void. He ran a hand up his chest to make sure he was actually still in his body. It felt weird to touch without being able to see it - weird, but good, too, almost like it was someone else’s hand. There must have been some kind of soundproofing in the walls; he expected every noise he made would seem louder without any competition, but mostly what he could hear was his own swallowing.

He grinned. This was going to be great. He shucked off his sleep pants and started dragging his hands all over his body, scratching his nails through sensitive spots, getting familiar with himself again. The feel of his muscles flexing under his skin made him laugh. There was nothing like a steady stream of catastrophes to keep a guy in shape.

He took his time, spreading his legs wide to run his fingertips up the inside of his thighs, going around the main attraction and up over his belly and chest, then back down again. He rolled his hips up into the stroking, trying to surprise himself with where his hands fell. He combed his fingers through his chest hair, then licked his fingertips and rolled his nipples into tight peaks. The familiar tension was building slowly, and the delay was driving him crazy in a fantastic way. He hadn’t had such an uninterrupted, lazy morning since he’d arrived in Eureka.

He really should have been expecting it, then, when he finally took himself in hand with a strong stroke... only to have the lights flicker back on and SARAH’s voice greet him with a disgustingly cheerful "Good morning, Sheriff Carter!"

He groaned and let his hands flop back on the bed. "Good morning, SARAH. How did the upgrade go?"

"I feel fabulous! Would you like to hear the results of the benchmark tests? I’m running so much faster now, and my firewall is untouchable."

"That’s not the only thing that’s untouchable," Jack muttered to himself.

"I’m sorry, Sheriff Carter. Did you need some assistance with something?"

"Nope, I’m good, thanks." He pulled his pants back on and got out of bed. Another marvelous day in Eureka, coming right up.


End file.
